The Move

In the summer of 1976, America’s Bicentennial, my father bought us a house in a middle class neighborhood, several blocks away from the upscale mansions on Riverside Drive in Binghamton. The house we were to move in, on 22 Ayres Street, sat dead smack in the middle of the first block. Tony and I had not yet seen the place because we lived across town and my father had taken care of all the details. It’s not as though he and Vickie were “hush-hush” about the house, but looking back they might have been. I was so busy chasing after nine-month-old Jack, who had started pulling himself up on things and could cover lots of floor in his walker, that I barely had time to get excited.

            My father was proud of the fact that the new-to-us house was a steal at $20,000, part of which he paid for with a coin collection he’d been stockpiling for years. And though my father had told us that the house was a “fixer-upper,” which meant little to me at the time, no amount of euphemizing could have prepared me or my brother for the eyesore that was waiting for us. The day we piled into my father’s navy blue Chevy Caprice Classic and drove over to Ayres Street was one I will never forget. What stood before us made us weep.

            The place was a three-story house with dirty yellow paint that bubbled and peeled. A covered porch slouched in front, and as we would later discover, was infested with yellow jackets. Brown lattice skirted the bottom half and I was quite certain that a monster or goblin had made that section his home. Tony and I huddled together in the back seat. My heart sank when I thought of how embarrassing it would be to ever bring a friend here, if I was able. Tony stared at my father incredulously and said, “You mean we got to live here?”

            “It looks like a haunted house,” I wailed.

And in his typical fashion, my father, his black hair smoothed back from his face, smiled and shook his head. “Come on,” he said, “ya dummies.”

We slid out of the back seat and trudged along the sidewalk that was cracking and had enough bumps to trip me every time I took a step. My father led us along the sinking porch and into the front door, which didn’t creak, though I half-expected it to. In front of us was a long foyer with dusty gray carpeting, and walls with wood paneling. To the left was a set of stairs leading up and edged by a wood banister with spindles. High on the wall to the left of the staircase hung a stained-glass window whose bright colors were marred by a mixture of dust and grease.

As we trekked through the house nothing got any better. The living room had dusty commercial carpeting and dingy taupe walls. Thick drapes hung on the windows. In the kitchen, a long rectangular space, there were decrepit white appliances dotted with rust. There was a metal awning above the stove with an inch high coating of grease. On the floor, the mud-stained linoleum was bubbled and, beneath the door jambs, curling up toward the ceiling.

We moved into the house in August, on a warm and rainy night. Vickie had invited her younger sister Leslie to sleep over. Leslie was twelve, smoked cigarettes and pot, and was on the pill. When I asked what that meant, she rattled off a string of truths I may not have been ready to handle: men put their dicks in a woman’s hole to have sex and make a baby; your parents are Santa Claus; and, yes, that also means there is no Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy. “I take the pill,” Leslie said, “so I don’t get pregnant.”

“Does your mom know?” I asked, my eyes wide.

She answered, “Who do you think buys them for me?”

Leslie had shoulder-length light brown hair that flipped away from her face in the same style of Farrah Fawcett, but to me she looked more like Christy McNicol. Often times, when she had let me tag along with her friends, I got to watch her make out with her boyfriend, see a bunch of her guy friends pull down their pants and jiggle their penises, and, of course, memorize the dirty jokes they all told me. I was smart enough to know that these were not the type of jokes to tell at the dinner table. Nope. I saved them for school, and told them to my aghast friends on the playground.

The night we moved into the new house, Leslie and I rolled up our jean cuffs, kicked off our shoes, and ran down to the corner store for penny candy. We walked back in the rain chewing on Hot Tamales and Lemon Heads. Leslie was even tempered and let me talk about silly things like Fonzie and Chachi from Happy Days. She was so much nicer to me than Vickie was, and I wanted to ask whether Vickie was always so quick to anger and unpredictable. But something kept me from asking. I am still not sure of what. As I got a bit older, Leslie and I would become more close, almost like sisters. Almost.      

New blog post coming soon -- I promise

Hello, faithful readers. I am here to tell you that I am working on the next blog post. The following chapter in the memoir will involve the move to a new house and neighborhood. Lots to write. Many details to iron out. So, please stand by. And thank you, so much, for your patience and continued readership.

Sincerely,

Cynthia J. Hollenbeck

A New Mother and a New Brother

Vickie and my father were married in late spring, which meant that the long humid days of summer were right around the corner. I was excited that Tony and I had made friends with the neighbor kids, Eric Webster, and Joey and Maria Massa, who just happened to have a small clubhouse in their back yard. Looking back, I am fairly certain that whoever built the clubhouse had no intentions of having it used as make out joint for young kids. But Joey and I, and Maria and my brother spent many chilly afternoons sitting on the benches inside the playhouse kissing like grown ups. Joey was handsome with dark brown hair and blue eyes. And I liked to kiss him. But when it was my turn to make out with Eric, I grimaced. His lips were big and he slobbered all over my face.

Sometimes the five of us met in my and Tony’s back yard, which was quite large, and played baseball. But it never mattered what the game was, Tony took the lead. “Me and Joe are captains,” he said; “Chooch, I get you.” I sprinted over to stand behind him. Joe chose Maria. Eric stood there, shifting foot to foot, crooked brown bangs slanted over his eyebrows. I felt sorry for him. “You can be catcher,” Tony said. “We’ll bring you in when we need you.”

Tony got to bat first, of course, and hit a foul ball right over the chain link fence. He hollered, “Home run,” and jogged to first base. “No way,” Joey yelled, chasing him. By the time Tony got to second, Joey tackled him and then the two were rolling around on the grass. Maria stood motionless with her mouth agape. Eric’s eyes darted from Tony to Joey and back again. Tony turned to me, “Help me, you dumb ass.” So, I closed my eyes tight, jumped on Joey’s back, and started wailing on him. Then Eric jumped in and we were throwing punches and slaps. When I stopped long enough to look up, I saw a small brown booger stuck to the space above Eric’s upper lip.

“Ewww,” I yelled, pulling away. “I’m done. I am not touching that booger.”

I grabbed Maria by the hand and we ran into my house. Vickie sat at the kitchen table smoking a Marlboro 100. “Hi,” I said. “I’m getting us a drink.” Vickie smiled and went back to her cigarette.

The year was 1975, when the Vietnam War had finally ended even though I would have been completely unaware. I vaguely remember watching the Nixon trials on Vickie's grandmother's console TV, Tricky Dick's sweaty face and jiggly jowls monopolizing the screen. But, as a kid, of course, current events were not my forte. Plus, it was summer. All I wanted to do was make crafts and hang out with my friends at day camp instead of cleaning my room and getting scolded, when it was done wrong, by Vickie.

I will admit, however, that the marriage to my father had somehow, temporarily, softened Vickie. Living on Halford Street calls to mind fewer punishments than I had endured in the past and would endure in the future. Perhaps the marriage had boosted her feelings of self worth, made her proud to be a "mother" whether or not the kids were inherited. Vickie offered to sew my fairy costume for the Sleeping Beauty play at day camp, let me have Maria over, and bought the family an adorable gray kitten with white paws that we called Mittens.

Vickie had been eating less food than usual, which was hard to notice since she barely ate anyway, but it seemed that all she could stomach was bowls of Quisp cereal, which tasted a lot like Cap’n Crunch. An adamant hater of milk, Vickie started to drink it regularly. She also bought packages of Reese’s peanut butter cups and hid them in the cupboards.

I never really understood the hiding of the chocolate, since neither Tony nor I had a sweet tooth. My father did not like sweets, and went as far as scraping the icing off cinnamon rolls when he bought the small Sara Lee packages wrapped in plastic. So, I suppose my brother and I simply had not developed a taste for sweets. But Vickie loved them.

I was too young to notice that Vickie's sporadic appetite and cravings for sweets were caused by pregnancy. And even now, I have no recollection of her ever sitting Tony or me down to tell us that she was having a baby. I have no idea when I made the realization, but I do remember her growing belly, and the maternity clothes. One was a brown shirt covered with tiny yellow flowers. She looked adorable in it. And I was not the least bit bothered by the fact that Vickie was pregnant, because I was sure she was going to give me a little sister. By the time the baby started to kick, she invited me to press my head against her belly and listen to the gentle thumping.

I did not want another brother because Tony loved to trick and scare me. Of course, I did little to help my case, since I thought the sun rose and set behind him. Tony was the center of my world, and if he would have told me to shoot someone, I would have obeyed without question. One time, we were eating hard boiled eggs at Vickie’s mother’s house with her brother Reggie. As I bit into a yolk, Tony looked at me and said, “You know, the shells are more nutritious. Try one.” I bit into the shell, the sharp points poking the inside of my mouth. Tony and Reggie laughed as blood pooled on my tongue.

Then there was the time Tony invited me into our bedroom to check out the glow-in-the-dark poster of Frankenstein's monster that we found in a box of Frankenberry cereal. First, he clicked on the bare bulb that hung from the ceiling and held the poster up to it. After a few moments, he said, “Okay. . . Turn it off.”

“I don’t want to,” I said. “You’re going to scare me.”

“No,” he said, “I won’t.”

My stomach stirred as I clicked off the light. The entire room was black except for the electric green Frankenstein head (a sketch of the Boris Karloff version) staring me right in the face.

“See,” Tony said, “isn’t it cool?”

I nodded in the dark, feeling relatively safe. Then, without warning, Tony charged toward me with the poster and yelled, “Raaaaahhh.” I screamed and ran for the door. The knob was stuck, of course, and I struggled to get out. Tony clicked the light back on.

“God,” he said, “you're such a chicken.”

But, few events could compare to the event that I consider the coup de gras. It happened one night when my father and I were watching Benny Hill. I had gotten up to use the bathroom when I noticed that the light was on in the bedroom. I peeked in to find Tony "hanging" from the top bunk with a plastic noose wrapped around his neck. My jaw dropped wide open and I ran into the living room, yelling, “Daddy, Daddy. Tony hung himself.”

My father’s eyes snapped open and he leaped from the couch. We rushed back into the bedroom and found Tony grasping wildly to loosen the noose, his lips pressed together in a flat line. With one swift motion, my father’s curled fist slammed on top of Tony’s head, making a loud thunk. After my father stomped out of the room, Tony’s green eyes met mine. “You dummy,” he said, “my feet were touching the floor.”

There was something comforting and completely dysfunctional about my relationship with my brother. He loved to freak me out, get me to do stupid things, or tell me lies like, “Dad found me in a garbage can,” or “It tastes good when you pour salt and pepper into your soda.” I was at Tony's disposal, his beck-and-call girl. “Chooch, get me this. Chooch, get me that.” And if I didn’t do exactly what he wanted me to do, he called me “Retard,” or punched me. Despite all of this, I wanted nothing more than to please him. Even when we were kids, he had an air of rock star coolness. Charisma. And as long as I was close to him, I felt safe.


As it turned out, Christmas of 1975 was one of our best. Vickie and my father went all out. From the tree farm where they'd bought one of the fattest and tallest trees I had ever seen to the barrage of gifts that appeared in the morning. And because Vickie was getting more pregnant every day, Tony and I were able to trim the tree, string popcorn on long strands of thread, and hang garland on light fixtures and in door jambs. We had learned our lesson about getting up too early and tearing open gifts that did not belong to us, so, on Christmas morning we played cards in our bedroom until Vickie came to get us.

Walking into the living room that Christmas morning was thrilling. The tree looked like it had given birth to a litter of gifts, one entire section of the room filled with brightly colored boxes and bags. Leaning against the wall was an enormous rectangular gift covered in three different kinds of wrapping paper. But Vickie insisted that we first dig through our stockings, whose contents we dumped onto the floor. They were stuffed with LifeSavers books, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, small boxes of Whoppers and Milk Duds, wind-up toys, and chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil.

After we loaded up on candy and chocolate, we went to work on the gifts. Tony got a clock radio. I got a doll with hair I could style with a plastic curling iron and rollers. We both got plastic eggs filled with Silly Putty. Tony got a dozen Matchbox cars. I got Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls. We got dress clothes and pajamas and winter coats. And my parents saved the enormous gift for last—an air hockey table that we set up in our kitchen.

Looking back, there was something poignant about this particular Christmas, since it would be the last before the arrival of my new sibling. Nothing could have prepared me for how much my life was about to change, going from being the little sister, the "baby" with nary a care in the world, to an older sister, someone suddenly strapped with unsolicited responsibility.

It was during Christmas vacation that Vickie went to the hospital, and phoned later to say that she had given birth to a boy. “Rats,” I mumbled into the receiver. Life was so freaking unfair. I didn't want a brother. Tony could be such a jerk, and I was certain that a smaller version of him would be no better. But, I kept these feelings to myself and dreaded the day I would have to meet the new baby boy.

All that disappointment vanished when my father brought Vickie and my new brother home. My parents sat me down on the couch and I got to cradle "Jack" in my arms. I looked into his cloudy blue eyes, and smoothed my fingers over his feathery hair. His clenched fists and wrinkled brow brought tears to my eyes. He was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

The first few days after Vickie had returned home from the hospital, she tiptoed around the house, groaning with each step. When I asked what was wrong, she answered, “It’s my stitches.” I was seven and knew nothing about childbirth. Why would she need stitches? The thought scared me. I had seen kids at school sewn up after injuries to elbows, knees, or fingers. Had they sewn up Vickie "down there?" I imagined her bottom all pink and tender and stitched together like the laces on roller skates.

Later that morning, while I sat on the couch watching Saturday morning cartoons, Vickie asked me to hold Jack while she looked for a receiving blanket. I stared at the tiny person I held and was overwhelmed by feelings I was too young too recognize or name. There was a stirring in my belly as I envisioned letting go and dropping him on the floor. So, I held tighter. I would never let anyone hurt this baby.

After a bit, Vickie took Jack from me, sat in the recliner, and unzipped the top half of her robe. She pulled him close and moved his face to her breast. His small mouth clamped on and his fists held his puckered face. Vickie gazed into his eyes and wore a subtle smile, a look I had never seen when she looked at Tony or me.

For the first time since I'd known her, she seemed completely relaxed, as though she had arrived at a place she had been seeking her entire life. Jack suckled and she stared lovingly at him. A feeling of warmth welled in me, and I was envious. I had no memory of my biological mother, had no idea whether she had nursed me or not, or gazed upon me with that same look of love. All I knew, was that when I had kids, I too, would breastfeed.

Why I haven't been posting

Loyal readers,

All I can say is Auuuuggghh. Lately, work and my personal life have been kicking my literal and proverbial ass. My latest chapter of the Cobbler's Daughter involves the pregnancy of my former stepmother. If I can get to some writing this weekend, I hope to have a blog post up for you soon.

Thank you for sticking by me. It means so much.

Cheers.

Cindy